Fintech is one of the UK’s great economic success stories, with London remaining one of the few places in the world where banking, technology, capital markets, regulation, and entrepreneurship exist at genuine global scale. However, there is a danger in assuming it will remain that way simply because it has been until now.
Incumbency has never been a particularly good strategy, as seen in the cases of Marconi, Nokia, and more recently, VW. This week, the global fintech industry is descending on the City for London Fintech Week, where 100 fintech leaders were asked about their thoughts on the industry, its prospects, and Britain’s position in an increasingly fierce global race.
Fintech Leaders’ Views on Britain
These leaders, who are actually building companies, raising money, hiring people, and competing internationally, believe that Britain still has something valuable to offer. The government clearly recognises the importance of the sector and has financial services and fintech at the heart of its growth agenda, alongside efforts to make Britain a more attractive place to invest, innovate, and scale technology businesses.
Despite a difficult economic backdrop, 94 per cent of fintech leaders believe the UK remains a good place to start and grow a fintech business. However, they also see significant risks to the UK’s competitive position, particularly as other financial centres move quickly on artificial intelligence, digital assets, payments, and the infrastructure that will underpin the next generation of financial services.
Global Competition
Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, and other centres are investing aggressively in technology, talent, and regulation designed to attract the companies that will define the next decade of finance. Capital and entrepreneurs have choices, and they will go where they believe they can build fastest. The digitisation of finance is a key area where the UK can capitalise on its strengths, with AI being a particularly good example of how financial companies are developing products, communicating with customers, fighting fraud, and operating internally.
The winners will be those that create the conditions in which companies can actually deploy AI. This logic also applies to digital assets and tokenisation, with financial markets moving towards a world in which traditional and digital finance increasingly overlap. London has an extraordinary concentration of institutions, expertise, and market infrastructure with which to capitalise on that shift.
Government Support
The City has spent centuries building institutions based on trust, law, deep pools of capital, and international connections. Combine that with Britain’s technology ecosystem and regulatory expertise, and the UK has an asset that is extremely difficult for competitors to replicate. Government cannot create the next great British fintech company, nor should it try, but it can determine whether the founders of that company believe Britain is the best place to build it.
This means providing competitive regulation, access to capital, support for scaling businesses, a serious approach to skills and immigration, and much greater urgency around technologies such as AI and digital assets. Fintech is no longer a fashionable offshoot of the technology industry; it is increasingly part of the infrastructure through which money moves, businesses get paid, consumers invest, and financial markets operate.
As fintech leaders gather in London this week, there is plenty of goodwill in the bank for Britain. The people running the industry still believe strongly in the UK. The government’s job now is to make sure they have just as much reason to believe in it five years from now, by providing the necessary support and infrastructure to help the industry continue to thrive.